Archer returns to FX on Monday [January 13], and the show is undergoing a major reboot in its fifth season, which has been dubbed "Archer Vice." The ISIS team members are forced to explore new career options - which eventually lands them on the wrong side of the law.

"I think [creator] Adam Reed probably got very drunk one night while he was writing on his computer," star H. Jon Benjamin told reporters on a conference call this week of the revamp. "When he told me in detail what was going to happen, I was thrilled. I loved the idea. But in fairness, I couldn't reject it. I couldn't say, 'Don't do that.' I don't have that kind of power."

Some mild spoilers in the full article.

I couldn't find a thread for the new season so here we are.

And I put it in SFF because the show regularly has such SFF tropes as cyborgs, clones, space stations, artificial lifeforms, undersea laboratories, etc.

I'm not sure what that was. Before I read this thread I thought it was just Archer's fantasy and things would be back to normal next episode. But it now appears to be a new direction in the series and they are trying to sell it. Not sure I like it, but will give it a chance.

The montage was definitely just Archer's imagination and not a straight preview, but it is also a hook for what this season will be about. I don't see them going back to the spy genre any time soon. At least based on the articles I have read; they stressed that it is a workplace comedy with insane people and insane situations and "Archer Vice" certainly qualifies.

AVC: The first episode ends with that lengthy montage of things coming up in episodes to be seen. Was that you trying to assure the fans that it’s still going to be basically the same show?

AR: Yes, very much so. When that was written, we wrote this trailer, and then it was all sort of place-holder stuff, and I thought, oh yeah, we’ll get to that and somebody will be kicked out of a helicopter at 3,000 feet. So we said, “We’ll wait and we’ll finish the trailer, because we’re going to need the existing footage and blah blah blah.” Then it turned out that almost none of the things in the original trailer as written wound up in the season. So we went back—and I guess how they make real trailers—watched seven episodes and used footage to put in the trailer.

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Very much looking forward to seeing how the hell they work that tiger into things....

The cocaine cast struck me as in the vein of Cheech & Chong's marijuana van. I think there was another movie where drugs where turned into plastic objects in order to be smuggled, but I can't remember right now.